come?” Mitch shook his head, adrenaline surging. “No. This is no drill. This is the real deal.”
Chapter Two
Mitch and his sparse trauma crew sprinted toward the field. Reporters and onlookers chased.
“Stay back!” Mitch commanded the engulfing crowd. Lauren skidded in her steps. Did she think he meant her?
He waved her to follow, but she froze in place. Her wind-tousled fiery hair rose up from her face like a crown of silken flames. Remarkable emerald eyes darted awkwardly between him and the landing choppers. Abject terror wrestled other emotions on her face. She was concerned. Conflicted. Stricken.
His heart was full of compassion for her as it had been in the car when she’d mentioned the tragic way her parents had died.
Lem once told him that she’d been traumatized by not knowing how to help her parents she’d found barely breathing. That tragedy birthed her dream to become a nurse who had moonlighted as a CPR coach so other families wouldn’t have to live her nightmare.
Mitch didn’t make a habit of questioning God, but what a terrible twist of fate it had been for sweet Lauren to lose her first patient off her obstetrics orientation a year ago.
Lem said the subsequent lawsuit also raked Lauren over the coals. Mitch knew because Lem, in his love of telling stories concerning Lauren, had left nothing out.
According to Lem, the ordeal had so devastated her, she had not only bolted from nursing, she had pulled away from God, faith, friends and family. Then wrapped herself up in her only other skill—sewing. Something Lauren’s mom had taught her and was their special mother-daughter connection before her mom died.
Mitch’s heart broke for Lauren now, seeing in person the unleashed emotion on her face. The unshackled fight-or-flight reaction in her eyes. He knew it.
That instant a veil lifted, allowing Mitch to see the huge gaping wounds Lauren’s own trauma had left her with. Hurts she had yet to be healed from.
The moment suspended Mitch in time and made him wish for words that would heal and not harm.
For Lem, Mitch wanted like crazy to comfort her but he’d have others to focus on soon. He couldn’t be everywhere at once.
But Someone could.
Jesus, rescue her. Show her the truth. Draw her back.
No idea what the last phrase encompassed, but that’s the prayer that pressed out of him so he let it fly.
He maintained eye contact with Lauren as long as possible to keep stride and still send visual cues that she was not only welcome to help, but worthy and needed.
Apparently misinterpreting his directive gaze, she whirled toward the encroaching crowd. “Cameras off!” Lauren yelled above chopper noise to reporters. “They may have real victims here.”
They? By that word, Mitch knew Lauren no longer thought of herself as part of the medical community, which saddened him.
Nevertheless, the authority in her voice impressed him because even the most aggressive reporters complied instantly.
The crowd stopped as one unit and fell back in silence. Concern infiltrated faces. Mass murmurs rose.
Mitch trudged forward. “I hope this is someone’s idea of a very bad joke,” he told Ian. Ian’s jaw clenched as he nodded.
But when a crew medic jumped from the chopper before it fully landed, Mitch knew with sick certainty it wasn’t. The strained look on the man’s ruddy face confirmed it.
“Incomiiiing!” Ian yelled.
Mitch’s team rushed ahead, leaving him to obtain report and issue orders.
As when overseas, they worked like neurons not having to be told their duty.
Ian and Kate met one chopper. Mitch’s circulating and triage nurses approached another.
Gratitude for their professionalism filled him.
His pre-op and scrub nurses weren’t flying in until next week, and his recovery nurse had pulled out to reenlist. Mitch would need to replace her ASAP.
He grabbed a man with a microphone. “Clear paths. This isn’t part of the ceremony. We have injured on the way.”
The microphone man complied. Officials looked as baffled as Mitch felt. “But are you set up for that?” one sputtered.
Mitch’s risen hands both halted and calmed them.
The mayor jogged to keep up. “Sir, you’re not officially open… .”
“We are if those choppers have wounded in them.”
The mayor’s face turned grim. “They radioed they were coming to see the trauma center opening, but not with patients. Dr. Wellington, I fear something terrible has happened.”
Mitch’s sentiments exactly. “We’ll handle it, Mayor. We’ve handled worse situations before.”
Respect gleamed from the mayor’s eyes. “I’m sure you have. What can I do?”
“Send any available Eagle Point EMTs and other first responders. And thank God choppers were right there.”
“Yes, indeed, but are you sure the center is ready to—?”
“Absolutely.” We’ll make it ready. Mitch turned, ending the conversation. The crowd parted as he plowed through. He paused to focus on a third approaching chopper.
What had just happened?
If distant smoke billowing above trees lining the interstate was an indication, something massive.
A horrible thought struck. There was one major road in and out. If this was a northbound motor vehicle accident, the victims had most likely been on their way here to the ceremony.
So in building the trauma center, he’d created catastrophe?
No. He refused to believe that or doubt God’s goodness.
Until another medical chopper ripped through the clouds. Disbelief coursed through him. How many more casualties would come? No matter. They’d handle it.
Mitch peered into the domed windows of medical choppers to get an idea of how many patients occupied each.
Rushing air and the high-pitched whup-whup-whups of whistling rotor blades pushed all other sound away.
Mitch mentally counted his staff. Not nearly enough. More nurses were flying in next week. He needed help now.
Instantly Mitch thought again of Lem’s granddaughter.
He turned, scanned the crowd.
Lem had said her biggest regret was that intense college years had prevented her from visiting Lem. Hadn’t he mentioned something about her working
